Contaminants widespread in Columbia River Basin, new report says

A new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report says four contaminants — mercury, DDT and its breakdown products, PCBs and PDBEs — are widespread across the Columbia River Basin, at levels that prompt the regional EPA administrator to call the new findings “troubling.”

Said EPA Region 10 administrator Elin Miller in a press release:

Today’s report shows that toxics are found throughout the basin at levels that could harm people, fish, and wildlife. Federal, tribal, state and local efforts have reduced risks of some toxics such as PCBs and DDTs, but in many areas, they continue to pose an unacceptable risk.

Remember, this is a Bush administration appointee speaking.

Some are on the increase. PBDEs, for example, saw a four-fold growth in concentration in some types of fish in the Spokane River from 1996 to 2005.

And that’s just what we know about. In many places, there wasn’t enough testing to come to a conclusion about whether the contamination levels are going up or down.

Recommendations? Yah, sure, they got ’em, including:

expanding efforts to reduce toxics being released into the environment;